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Jazz Musician of the Day: Wardell Gray
All About Jazz is celebrating Wardell Gray's birthday today! Wardell Gray was one of the truly great, yet by now almost obscure, bebop tenor saxophonists. With a smooth mellow and consistent tone, he created a tenor style that veered from swing to bebop, a style that was elegant, sure-footed, mature and distinctive. His premature death under ...
Bill Goodwin: Not Less Than Everything
by Victor L. Schermer
Bill Goodwin is like a breath of fresh air blowing through jazz. From the time around 1954 when he was in jny: Los Angeles and just learning the drums, and inspired by Shelly Manne, to today, around his 80th birthday, he has loved jazz and the musicians unconditionally. He has befriended and worked with so many ...
2021: The Year in Jazz
by Ken Franckling
The jazz world continued grappling and adjusting in year two of the COVID-19 pandemic. International Jazz Day again went virtual for the most part. Singer Tony Bennett put the final stamp on his touring--and likely recording--career after his Alzheimer's disclosure. Trumpeter Irvin Mayfield was headed to federal prison. The National Endowment for the Arts welcomed four ...
Doug Lawrence: Doug Lawrence & Friends
by Jack Bowers
If the name Doug Lawrence doesn't sound familiar, the name Count Basie surely should. What is the Lawrence- Basie connection? Well, for more than two decades Lawrence has been the featured tenor saxophone soloist with the renowned and still- active Count Basie Orchestra, a chair once impressively occupied by the likes of Lester Young, Eddie “Lockjaw" ...
Houston Person: Live in Paris
by Jack Bowers
The greatest jazz musicians have one trait in common; they make everything sound so ridiculously easy that listeners are liable to lose sight of the blood, sweat and tears which brought them to that pinnacle. Tenor saxophonist Houston Person, an octogenarian who keeps sidestepping every obstacle including Father Time, is one such master; regardless of groove ...
Chad Lefkowitz-Brown: Quartet Sessions
by Jack Bowers
The Quartet Sessions (there are two of them) mark the eighth recording as leader by New York-based tenor saxophonist Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, an heir-apparent to an acclaimed dynasty of hard-boppers whose monarchs include Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray, Gene Ammons, Charlie Rouse, Hank Mobley, Sonny Rollins and their peers, and embraces such contemporaries as Eric Alexander, Don Menza ...
Jazz Musician of the Day: Wardell Gray
All About Jazz is celebrating Wardell Gray's birthday today! Wardell Gray was one of the truly great, yet by now almost obscure, bebop tenor saxophonists. With a smooth mellow and consistent tone, he created a tenor style that veered from swing to bebop, a style that was elegant, sure-footed, mature and distinctive. His premature death under ...
Dial "S" for Sonny
by C. Michael Bailey
Pianist Sonny Clark was culturally marginalized in much the same way as his contemporary Elmo Hope—both heroin-addicted jazz musicians in the 1950s: at the time, and romantically, a cliche. Both pianists have been sorely lumped into the “Bud Powell school of bop piano" which superficially may seem accurate until one considers the evolutionary continuum of jazz ...
Two Twin-Tenor Duos
by Jerome Wilson
The idea of two tenor saxophonists playing together has a long, storied history in jazz through pairings like Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray, Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt, and Zoot Sims and Al Cohn. Such duos have become harder to find in recent years but here are two newer examples. Jeff Rupert / ...
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Wardell Gray
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Wardell Gray was one of the truly great, yet by now almost obscure, bebop tenor saxophonists. With a smooth mellow and consistent tone, he created a tenor style that veered from swing to bebop, a style that was elegant, sure-footed, mature and distinctive. His premature death under mysterious circumstances in 1955, robbed the jazz world of another unique player, and cast him into distant recollection, though his talent deserves greater recognition. Born in Oklahoma City, Gray grew up in Detroit, playing locally as a teenager. He was a member of the Earl Hines big band during 1943-1945 before moving to Los Angeles in 1945
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